Iraq I:  Top Scientists Surrender; Hunt for Banned Weapons Continues

Two senior Iraqi scientists believed to have been involved in their country’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction surrendered to U.S. forces and other authorities over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times reported today (see GSN, April 11).

Iraqi nuclear scientist Jafar Jafar, believed to have headed Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, surrendered outside of Iraq, U.S. officials said yesterday.  While Jafar is not in U.S. custody, he is being held in an unidentified Middle Eastern country where U.S. intelligence officials have met with him, officials said.

“U.S. officials have had access to him and will continue to do so,” a U.S. official said.

The announcement of Jafar’s surrender came one day after Iraqi Gen. Amir Saadi, the chief liaison with U.N. inspectors, surrendered in Baghdad.  Saadi is believed to have been a top scientist in Iraq’s suspected chemical weapons program, according to the Times.

U.S. officials hope Jafar and Saadi will provide information on Iraq’s WMD efforts.

“These are very, very significant,” a U.S. official said.  “They will have extremely valuable insights into where the bad stuff is, how they got it and where the other people are.  The potential is there that these two guys can crack Saddam’s weapons programs for us,” the official added.

The Bush administration might offer Jafar and Saadi amnesty in exchange for both their cooperation and their assistance in obtaining the cooperation of other Iraqi WMD scientists, officials said.

“We did it with Wernher von Braun,” a U.S. official said, referring to the German rocket engineer who helped pioneer the U.S. space program after he led 126 colleagues to the United States in “Operation Paperclip” in 1945.  “These guys can get others to come in,” the official said (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, April 14).

Insider Help Needed

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that U.S. forces would only be able to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction with the aid of those who had been involved in such efforts.

“The inspectors didn’t find them and certainly we’re not going to find them,” Rumsfeld said on CBS’s Face the Nation.  “It’s not like a treasure hunt where you run around and dig down and see if there’s a tunnel someplace.  You’ve got to find the people who dug the tunnels, the people who worked in those operations,” he said (Stephanie Ho, VOA News, April 13).

U.S. forces in Iraq have compiled a list of as many as 3,000 suspect Iraqi sites, with teams investigating up to 20 a day, according to U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks.  Iraqi residents and officials are also suggesting additional sites to add to the list, U.S. military officials said.

“There are so many sites, we are not able to get to all of them right away,” a senior U.S. Defense Department official said.  “It’s fair to say there are a lot of places U.S. forces are adding to the list,” the official said (Matt Kelley, Associated Press, April 14).

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday that he was confident U.S. troops would find Iraqi WMD.

“The combat period is over, and we can now turn our attention to finding weapons of mass destruction,” Powell said in an interview with the BBC.  “There’s strong evidence and no question about the fact there are weapons of mass destruction.  We will find weapons of mass destruction,” he added (Andy Geller, New York Post, April 14).

More Suspicious Finds …

Meanwhile, U.S. troops in Iraq have discovered several suspicious finds, according to reports.

U.S. Marines yesterday discovered 278 artillery shells that initially tested positive for blister agent, according to the London Independent.  The shells, found in trailers parked in a schoolyard, will have to undergo further tests for more conclusive identification, the Marines said (Anne Penketh, London Independent, April 14).

Documents have also been found in several of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s palaces in Baghdad that have provided more information on Iraqi WMD stockpiles and where they might be stored, according to military sources (Time, April 13).

In addition, U.S. forces in Baghdad yesterday found a trailer filled with Iraqi missiles based on information provided by an Iraqi computer technician, according to VOA News.

After a meeting with residents of Baghdad’s al-Muthana neighborhood, a computer technician told U.S. Marine 1st Lt. Michael Cerroni about a trailer with its doors ripped open that contained four missiles.

“We drove down there, and my jaw just dropped,” Cerroni said.  “Right on the side of a highway.  Anyone with a tractor could just back up and drive away with them,” he added.

The missiles initially appeared to be short-range, Russian-made Frog 7 missiles, Cerroni said.  Further evaluation of the missiles is needed to determine their exact type (Lauri Kassman, VOA News, April 13).

A U.S. military “sensitive site exploitation” team has recently investigated a facility located near the town of al-Qaim and is currently awaiting test results, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers said Friday.  Al-Qaim is home to a fertilizer plant that U.S. officials suspect of being part of Iraq’s chemical weapons program and a facility that was used to refine uranium ore (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, April 12).

…But Dead Ends Too

Several prior suspicious finds have turned out to be false alarms, according to the Financial Times.  For example, 14 drums of liquid found at an agricultural compound near the Iraqi town of Hindiyah, which were initially thought to be filled with chemical weapons agents, are now believed to contain pesticide.  Also, earlier reports of discovered chemical rockets have yet to be verified (Mark Huband, Financial Times, April 12).

IAEA Concerned for al-Tuwaitha Security

The International Atomic Energy Agency has asked the United States to properly safeguard radioactive materials stored at the captured al-Tuwaitha complex — the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear efforts — and to limit access to the site, according to an agency press release.

“I have written yesterday to the United States government asking that it ensure the security and safety of all the nuclear material there, which has been under IAEA seal since 1991,” IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said in a statement.  “I indicated that until our inspectors return to Iraq, the U.S. has responsibility for maintaining security at this important storage facility,” he added.

The IAEA has received assurances from the United States that it will provide heightened security for the complex, the agency release said (IAEA release, April 11).

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Television:  WMD Documentary Series Begins Tonight

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A four-part television documentary on threats posed by weapons of mass destruction begins tonight with an episode on the history of chemical and biological weapons and the efforts to control them.  Hosted by former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, the series is being aired on public television stations.

Subsequent episodes will examine nuclear proliferation, threats of WMD terrorism and strategies to confront terrorism. 

Tonight’s episode, “Silent Killers: Poisons and Plagues,” previewed by Global Security Newswire, chronicles the development and use of chemical and biological weapons in the 20th century, and documents efforts to control and eliminate them.

A prominent theme is that governments, beginning with the major adversaries of World War I through the Cold War, viewed chemical and biological weapons as strategically useful.  World War I-era Britain and Germany, World War II-era Japan and Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as Iraq, were all shown to value the weapons for various reasons.

World War I-era Germany “sought chemical weapons to overcome the stalemate of trench warfare,” said expert Jonathan Tucker.

The horrors of the use of gas, during that war, however, also launched global moral condemnation that stigmatized chemical and biological weapons, and led to an international ban on first use — though not possession — of such weapons, according to the program.

The program recounts Japanese testing and military use of biological agents against China during the 1930s, German testing and use of gas in concentration camps during World War II, U.S. acquisition of the Japanese testing results in a post-War agreement not to prosecute participants for war crimes, and U.S. and Soviet development of agents during the Cold War.

The program also characterizes, however, a growing view that the proliferation of such weapons ultimately posed greater insecurity than security for established nations.

The U.S. view in the early 1970s that the proliferation of biological weapons posed a strategic threat to the United States, and global outrage at Iraq’s use of chemical weapons in the 1980s, respectively led to the signing of global bans on those weapons, the documentary reports.

[EDITOR’S NOTE:  This documentary series is produced by Ted Turner Documentaries.  Turner is the major supporter of the Nuclear Threat Initiative that is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, produced independently by the National Journal Group, Inc.]

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International Response:  EU Members to Discuss Nonproliferation Strategies

Foreign ministers from the European Union are expected to discuss measures for addressing WMD proliferation during a meeting scheduled for today in Luxembourg (see GSN, Jan. 22).

“Iraq is not the end of the story.  We will have to deal with other countries, such as North Korea,” an EU diplomat said.  “We need a policy.  We cannot allow ourselves to be torn apart again, which the Iraq crisis did to us,” the diplomat added.

One possible measure would be to increase WMD monitoring and information collection, and to improve cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to a six-page document expected to be discussed at the meeting.  The document calls for a re-examination of EU export control systems, and for a greater willingness to impose sanctions on proliferators, the Financial Times reported.  It also raises the issue of the use of pre-emptive action if such sanctions are ineffective.

“Sooner or later, Europe will have to have a debate over pre-emptive strikes,” a diplomat said (Judy Dempsey, Financial Times, April 13).

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Iraq II:  U.S. Marines Advance Into Tikrit

U.S. Marines today pushed into the center of the Iraqi city of Tikrit, believed to be a stronghold of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the last major city not under coalition control (see GSN, April 11).

The U.S. assault on Tikrit was backed by “massive air power,” said Matthew Fisher, a reporter for the Canadian National Post.  Even though U.S. forces appear to be in control of the center of Tikrit, it is unknown if they control the rest of the city as well, according to CNN.com.  An estimated 2,500 Republican Guard troops and Fedayeen Saddam fighters are believed to be deployed in the city.  Iraq tribal leaders have said, however, that Hussein’s clan and Iraqi military units had left Tikrit days earlier (CNN.com, April 14).

In Baghdad today, several hundred Iraqi policemen volunteered to conduct joint patrols with U.S. forces to help bring looting and rioting in the city under control.  Reports of looting in Baghdad have been on the decline due, in part, to new, wider-ranging U.S. Marine patrols (Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, April 14).

New Reports of Russia-Iraq Cooperation

Meanwhile, the London Sunday Telegraph has reported that newly discovered documents in Iraq show that Russia’s intelligence services provided aid to Hussein prior to the war, according to CNN.com.

David Harrison, a Sunday Telegraph reporter, told CNN that he went into the damaged Iraqi Information Ministry headquarters and found documents on Russia’s intelligence aid to Iraq.  Such aid included information on the determination of the United States and the United Kingdom to begin war. 

One of the “choicest” discoveries was a report that Russia had provided to Iraq information from a recorded conversation between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Italian Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi last year on London’s willingness to send troops to Iraq, Harrison said.

“The conversation recorded by the Russians — presumably illegally — concerned the sending of troops to Iraq,” Harrison said.  “Tony Blair told the Italian Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi he was not prepared to do this while Britain still had troops in Afghanistan ... that this was too soon,” he added.

Russia’s foreign intelligence service refused to comment on the report.  “We do not comment on unsubstantiated and unfounded assertions,” a service spokesman said (CNN.com II, April 13).

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North Korea:  Pyongyang Softens Stance on Dialogue

North Korea Saturday said it is prepared to drop its insistence that it would only talk with the United States in a bilateral meeting, according to a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman (see GSN, April 11).

“If the U.S. is ready to make a bold switchover in its Korea policy for a settlement of the nuclear issue, the D.P.R.K. will not stick to any particular dialogue format,” the spokesman said.

The spokesman said, however, that the issue is one that must be settled between the United States and North Korea.

“The outcome of the meeting of the [U.N. Security Council] held on April 9 clearly indicated that the nuclear issue is a matter to be settled between the D.P.R.K. and the U.S.,” according to the spokesman.  “The U.S. asserts a ‘multilateral framework’ to be participated in by countries around the D.P.R.K. but their Korea policy and stand of desiring a peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue are clear by and large.  What matters is the U.S.,” he added.

While the spokesman said that Pyongyang would not insist on a specific format for dialogue, he still called for “direct talks” with Washington (Korean Central News Agency, April 12).

North Korea’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, however, yesterday criticized the United States and said the Iraq war “launched by the U.S. imperialists” had “put the world peace and stability in a great peril.”

 “The U.S. is now keen to ignite another Korean war after concluding the Iraqi war,” the newspaper said (Korean Central News Agency, April 13).

The conflict in Iraq, however, may have been the impetus for Pyongyang to ease its stance on bilateral negotiations, the Associated Press reported.

“North Korea’s softening position seems to have mainly come because it wasn’t in an advantageous position internationally,” said Ra Jong-il, South Korea’s top security adviser.

“This war on Iraq seems to have become a significant opportunity in deciding the landscape of international politics,” Ra added (Soo-Jeong Lee, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, April 14).

U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that U.S. success in the Iraq conflict led to the North Korean shift.

“I think that people have got to know that we are serious about stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction and that each situation requires a different response,” Bush said.  “But we are making good progress in North Korea,” he added (Mike Allen, Washington Post, April 14).

After U.S. successes in Iraq, North Korea could choose to hasten efforts to develop nuclear weapons or it could seek a peaceful solution to the Korean crisis, the Financial Times reported.

“Hopefully, this statement means they have chosen the sensible option,” a diplomat said (Andrew Ward, Financial Times, April 13).

The U.S. State Department acknowledged the North Korean statement.

“We noted the statement with interest,” State Department spokeswoman Amanda Batt said Saturday, adding that “we expect to follow up through appropriate diplomatic channels” (Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, April 13).

Bush administration officials were more forthright with their excitement over the latest development in the nuclear crisis.

“It looks like President Bush was smarter than everyone said he was,” a senior administration official said (Doug Struck, Washington Post, April 13).

The new development represents “something of a vindication for the administration,” according to Robert Gallucci, the chief negotiator of the 1994 Agreed Framework to freeze North Korean nuclear development.  North Korea’s decision, however, might have come after Chinese and Russian pressure on Pyongyang, Gallucci said (Allen, Washington Post).

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United States:  Los Alamos Produces High-Purity Plutonium Sources

U.S. researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have produced 1,200 highly pure plutonium sources, some of which will be used to maintain the laboratory’s nuclear weapons program, Science Letter reported today.

This is the first time since 1987 that the New Mexico laboratory has produced the highly pure plutonium sources, which are used as primary analytical chemistry standards.

“This was a major challenge,” said Gerald Coriz, of the Laboratory’s Nuclear Materials Technology Division.

The sources weigh 1 gram each and are about the size of a hearing aid, according to Science Letter.

Scientists used a new extrusion, or pressing, method to produce the sources.  The old method, which involved “nibbling” away at a plutonium plate, might have contaminated the plutonium with wear from the nibbling tool, Coriz said (Science Letter, April 14).

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Smallpox:  Congress Passes Immunization Compensation Plan

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Taking swift action after months of negotiations, the U.S. Congress passed a bill Friday to compensate volunteers who suffer serious side effects as part of the national smallpox immunization campaign (see GSN, April 1).

The bill has now been sent to the White House for President George W. Bush’s signature.

The plan was negotiated between the White House and leading congressional Democrats and was introduced by Representative Richard Burr (D-N.C.) Friday.  Both houses passed the bill by voice vote the same day.

Congressional Republican leaders, backed by the White House, have said a compensation plan is urgently needed to encourage participation in the immunization program and defend the United States against a potential bioterrorism attack.  Burr introduced a compensation bill late last month but Democrats criticized it as insufficient and the plan was rejected.

Under the newly passed bill, volunteers who are permanently and completely disabled will receive up to $50,000 annually in lost wages, with no lifetime cap.  Volunteers who are temporarily or partially disabled can receive the same annual compensation, but they face a lifetime limit of $262,100.

The United States would pay $262,000 to spouses of volunteers who are killed by the vaccine.  Dependents of those who are killed can receive $262,000 in a lump sum, or $50,000 annually until they are 18.  The United States will not tax the payments, according to Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Lawmakers from both parties hope the bill will jumpstart the struggling vaccination program, which has been plagued by concerns about rare, but potentially severe side effects, and the lack of compensation for those who are sickened or killed.

More than 30 cases of heart inflammation have been reported among military and civilian vaccine recipients and U.S. health officials have recorded a number of other complications.  While states had hoped to immunize about 450,000 civilians by the end of February, fewer than 32,000 medical and emergency workers have stepped forward to take the vaccine, according to the latest figures provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kennedy negotiated the bill with the White House and was pleased with the results.

“For months we’ve worked to develop a fair, reasonable package to end this crisis.  Today, we can finally say that we have an agreement,” Kennedy said.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said the bill would strengthen the immunization program and allay the fears of potential volunteers.  He said the move is part of a “long-term strategy” which also includes strengthening the overall public health infrastructure.

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Syria:  Bush Accuses Syria of Harboring Chemical Weapons

U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that Syria might possess chemical weapons and urged it to cooperate with U.S. efforts in the region, Reuters reported (see GSN, April 10).

“I think that we believe there are chemical weapons in Syria,” Bush said (see GSN, April 11).  Asked if the United States would consider war against Syria, Bush said, “Each situation will require a different response and, of course, we’re — first things first,” Bush said, adding “We’re in Iraq now.  And the second thing about Syria is that we expect cooperation.  And I’m hopeful we’ll receive cooperation.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that Syrians had been captured and killed while fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

“The (Syrian) government is making a lot of bad mistakes, a lot of bad judgments in my view,” Rumsfeld said yesterday on the CBS’s Face the Nation.

Rumsfeld said he would not discuss the potential U.S. response if it were discovered that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had taken refuge in Syria.

That would show that “Syria would have made an even bigger mistake,” he said (Charles Aldinger, Reuters, April 14).

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said today that Syria must discuss U.S. allegations that it is developing weapons of mass destruction.

“We need to sit down and talk to them about it,” Straw said.  “What is important … is for Syria fully to cooperate over these questions that have been raised about the fact that some fugitives from Iraq may well have fled into Syria and other matters including whether they have in fact been developing any kind of illegal or illegitimate chemical or biological programs,” he added.

Straw said that Syria is not “next on the list” to attack and that “there is no next list” (CNN.com, April 14).

Damascus Demands Israeli WMD Disarmament

Syria announced that it would accept weapons inspectors but insisted that U.S. disarmament efforts span the Middle East and include Israel.

“We will not only accept the most rigid inspection regime, we will welcome it heartily,” said Imad Moustapha, the second ranking Syrian diplomat in Washington.

“Go everywhere, but please to every country in this Middle East.  You know very well that Israel is the country that is stockpiling nuclear weapons … Please help us free the Middle East from weapons of mass destruction,” he added (News24.com, April 14).

Israel, meanwhile, is planning to use the United States to make several demands of Syria, the Associated Press reported.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the period after the Iraq conflict presents an opportunity for Tel Aviv to demand Syria cut ties with the militant-group Hezbollah.

“We have a long list of issues we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it would be best done through the Americans,” Mofaz said (Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Associated Press/Canoe News, April 14).

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France:  Testing Shows Parisian Ricin Find Was Actually Common Grain

Suspected vials of ricin discovered last month at a Paris train station have been found instead to contain wheat germ and barley, French officials said Friday (see GSN, March 25).

French police discovered the vials, which initially tested positive for ricin, at the Gare de Lyon late last month (see GSN, March 21).  Further testing found, however, that the substance consisted only of ground up grains, which have some chemical similarities to ricin, judicial officials said (Associated Press/Yahoo.com, April 11).

“It is a shame to have waited so long to learn that the antiterrorist services were working on wheat and barley,” a senior French official said.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said that it intended to seek more tests from laboratories that specialize in vegetable matter (Christophe Cornevin, Le Figaro, April 12, GSN translation).

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Israeli Response:  Country Lowers Alert Status

Israel yesterday reduced its alert status, which allows residents to cease preparations for a possible chemical weapons attack, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, March 20).  The decision to reduce the alert was based on an assessment of the situation in western Iraq, where missile attacks on Israel could have been conducted (see GSN, April 10; Associated Press/New York Daily News, April 14).

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U.S. Plans:  Missile Tracking Satellites Set for Launch in Three Years

Northrop Grumman is prepared to meet a Defense Department goal of 2007 for launch of two prototype missile detection and tracking satellites, a component in the planned U.S. national missile defense system, Defense Week reported today (see GSN, Dec. 2, 2002).

The first two prototype satellites, to be equipped with infrared and visible sensors, are to be launched in 2006 and 2007, Northrop Grumman vice president for missile defense Patrick Caruana said.

“Both the acquisition and track sensors exist,” along with related equipment and the satellite itself, Caruana said, citing a low risk in integrating the systems.

The Space Tracking and Surveillance System satellites were previously known as the Space-Based Infrared System Low.

Once in low orbit, the satellites will be integrated into the U.S. missile test bed, set to be activated next year to provide an initial missile defense capability, according to Defense Week (see GSN, April 11).  The satellites will “validate space-based sensor concepts for target acquisition, tracking, and discrimination and to provide a space node for the test bed,” U.S. Missile Defense Agency Director Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish told the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee this month (Ann Roosevelt, Defense Week, April 14).

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